MTG Salvation

Top 8ed Regionals in Orlando using Merfolk Joe's list and sideboard guide except i switched the 2 main deck spell pierce to vapor snag at the last minute because of how much UR Phoenix I saw in the room.

7-1 in swiss

Matchups were

Bogles
Titanshift
Dredge
Sultai Reclamation
4c Kiki
UR Phoenix
Martyr proc
GDS

QuarterFinal
Amulet Titan


I got multiple comments from opponents and spectators each round about how they hadn't seen Merfolk in forever. Nobody plays fish in Florida?

found out the hard way that Exhaustion is now bugged on MTGO... card does literal nothing at the moment...

Quote from jonathanveedot »

Edit: Free Nikachu!

Nikachu is free. He only got banned for like a week. He just doesn't post here anymore because this place sucks.

All it proves is that the core of our deck is great no matter what we do with our flex slots. When your matchups line up with your list you have a great chance to do well if you know what you're doing. I personally think your odds of having things line up go down as the number of colors you play goes up.

won't keep me from playing around with green a little bit when the new set comes out but i don't expect it to outperform monoU

Yes. Forget tideshaper mystic. Sea's Claim is the best option to add more spreading seas effects. I often run 3 in the side. People have been known to run 4 spreading seas and 4 seas claim in the main as well. It can wreck face in the right meta. I've done it when there is a lot of tron and burn around.

Top 8 at a 50 player PPTQ yesterday

Finished first in the swiss at 5-0-1

Played
R1 Blue Steel 2-1 Opponent was grumbling about having to play against "the merfolk guy" but I've found this matchup to be deceptively dangerous. they are capable of some very explosive stuff and a Grand Architect into a giant Walking Ballista can destroy you. I took game 1 barely. I was dead next turn, he was at 13 i swung for 12 and then vialed in a Master of Waves before damage politely explaining that "Mutavault is an Elemental too". G2 i punted... bounced a lodestone golem with a harbinger holding up U so i could ceremonious rejection when he tried to replay it, instead he played Trinket Mage got a Ballista and I was thinking "Sweet he's going to tap out with grand architect for a giant ballista and i'll counter that instead" instead he floated a ton of mana, and then cast the Golem. I brain farted... Thinking "crap now i can't counter the ballista" and heard myself say "OK"... should have countered it... He followed up with Ballista while i was staring at the rejection in my hand like an idiot. The tax was too much and i couldn't cast enough spells to live next turn even with a Reejerey in play. G3 went T2 lord, T3 lord, T4 reejerey, T5 reejerey. He played a ballista and trinket maged for a basilisk collar but was 1 mana short of being able to kill enough creatures to survive.

R2 Jeskai Control 2-0 Just played it out slow and steady, 2-3 creatures at a time chipping away both games. I never played into it but he never saw a Supreme Verdict either game.

R3 Mono-Red Burn 2-0 This guy must have been lucky in the first two rounds. He had a very sub-optimal burn deck full of Vexing Devil and Shard Volley. Pretty simple to navigate.

R4 Naya Burn 2-0 Much better burn player. He got stuck on 1 land for too long. I stabilized at 8 life (plenty) with a huge board. G2 a bunch of spreading seas showed up. i hit both his sacred foundrys and he had no more white sources to fetch for. Ended the game with a Path and 2 Boros Charms stuck in his hand.

R5 Counters Company 2-1 (my friend, he refused to draw with me because he knew the matchup and the store is very lopsided with their prize payouts. playing it out pretty much guaranteed one of us (him) would get the first-place-after-swiss purse of $300 but i beat him and got to brag about it) He took G1, i stole G2 on a misplay from him. He tapped out for a chord to grab the vizier but used all his land instead of tapping his last creature, when i sacrificed my cursecatcher he had to untap his devoted druid to pay for it and i gut shotted it to death in response.) G3 top decked a gut shot for his bird and slammed lords faster than he could combo.

R6 Draw (UW Control)

1st after Swiss won me $300

T8
QF: EldraziTron 0-2 The wheels fell off... I was running hot all day and then the extreme end of variance showed up to bring me back to earth. My draws were almost statistically impossible. I have never seen anything like it. G1 Mull to 4 without seeing a single land in any hand. Keep a 4 card no-lander, scry to bottom, 4 turns pass and draw 0 lands. Scoop in response to Thought-Knot Seer. Go to game 2 without my opponent having seen a single card. G2 Mull to 5 without seeing a single land. Keep a 5 card no-lander. scry a cavern to the top. Play cavern cursecatcher and that was the only spell i cast in the entire top 8...
I saw 1 land out of 45+ cards...

List

Quote from sibin »

Wondering if I should cut Smugglers Copter from my list. Its so good to me everytime, but lots of sucesful lists arent using them

A lot of successful lists DO run them. I had them printed on my decklist but swapped them out for Dismembers at the last minute because there was a bunch of Company decks and Kiki-Chord decks in the room.

Quote from sibin »

Question: When Ixalan comes out, are you guys going to try any copy of Kopala in main deck ?

i am going to be trying Kopala for sure. I have a feeling she is going to make Phantasmal Image playable again. Image is such a nonbo with Kira but synergizes great with our new Legend.

did someone say master of waves was bad?

Here's what i have been playing

Quote from CrankyOM »

True. I've been trying to figure out the best game plan for surviving the aggro rush in turns 1-4. If this deck survives those turns it seems to stabilize and turn the corner fast. Been fiddling with harsh scrutiny, lay bare the heart, doomfall, never//return and random counterspells. Nothing really seems consistent tho. Thoughts?

i've been playing a UB build for a few weeks. literally cannot lose to mono-red. i'm something like 16-1 vs that deck. zombies is slightly harder but i am still favored big time. the aggro matchups are the easiest.

control isn't so bad once you know how to navigate it.

GB matchup is favorable.

I feel like a slight dog to Temur Energy. Still trying to shore that one up.

Ramp decks are a bloodbath... it feels pretty hopeless...

I like the look of the Warden, but I just don't think the Modern deck can cast it reliably. I also think Mistbinder just incentivizes ticking the curve down too much to want to stretch my manabase to oblivion for a 3-drop.

Nope, nothing out of the ordinary. Just a clear sign that your opponent has never played MTGO before.

Quote from Ashiok »

Disagree. The idea here is that we mitigate flooding by drawing more cards with branchwalker. Please notice that the average CMC of that decklist is ~1.8. Given that the recommended land count is something between 21 and 22. Read this artcile for reference: https://www.mtggoldfish.com/articles/brewer-s-minute-how-many-lands

That's just not how Turbo Xerox theory works. The more ways you have to find lands, the fewer actual lands you need, especially when you have little to no ways to use them efficiently once you're hellbent (and you don't - none of us do). I'll take Frank Karsten's math over SaffronOlive's any day, and according to him 20 lands is just right for this deck (you might even be able to get away with 19, thanks to the cantrips). As a Merfolk pilot with thousands of matches of sanctioned competitive matches on MTGO (and God-only-knows how many on paper), I can tell you that going over 20 lands will almost certainly result in having more lands than you can actually do productive things with in the midgame, which is how Merfolk loses.

Quote from Ashiok »

Disagree again. This deck is supposed to be faster and hit stronger than other creature decks. The only reason why we might want to interact is if they are creature-combo decks, hence making them stronger in that sense. Aside from that, we should be able to ignore what our opponent is doing most of the time while killing them in the meanwhile. Besides, what kind of interaction against the aforementioned decks harbinger of the tides provide? I've played 4 hurkyll's recall against affinity once upon a time and struggled to beat them in the tempo game, certainly bouncing one of their dudes, even if equipped with plating, isn't doing much better. Same for burn, you don't save yourself by bouncing a swiftspear or goblin guide, but by killing them faster. Tell me please how dismember is helping you in such matchups? The card is 4 points of damage to our face. If I'm a burn player I'm actually happy to see the opponent doing that to himself. You can't tailor your sideboard against everything, I chose some matchups and stuck to them, I really don't think our deck needs more help killing other creature decks because it is already good at that.

Dismember is bad against Burn, certainly, but thanks to cards like Harbinger of the Tides (which bottlenecks their mana if cast at sorcery speed, or erases attacks if Vialed/flashed in) and Master of Waves (which often wins the game on the spot), our Game 1 against the deck is good enough to get away with a dead card, which you will obviously side out. These are the dangers of cutting the cards you did - you have fundamentally changed how the deck functions, and not for the better. Against Affinity, Dismember is painful, but it beats taking lethal infect damage or 10+ regular damage from a loaded-up flyer, and it certainly beats letting your opponent untap Steel Overseer or Master of Etherium. Harbinger is important against Affinity because it provides a body to pressure the opponent with in addition to buying you time. These are all well-established things that have borne out by the testing of hundreds of Merfolk players. You can try to race those decks if you want. You will lose.

The point about being supposed to be faster than other creature decks simply isn't true - we're a medium-speed, high-power, high-resilience creature deck. We can't match up to the raw velocity of Affinity, Elves, Goblins, or Zoo, and we likely never will. What we have is the ability to interact, and the ability to defend ourselves against interaction. That's our competitive advantage.

Quote from Ashiok »

So... I have 12 sources to get those cards and you think that is bad? I can do as someone suggested and add a couple botanical sanctuns to solve this 'problem'. Regardless, I think you could go without the sanctum since you don't necessarily always need to cast speaker on one (if you have a cursecatcher, for instance, you play that instead).

Yes, I think it's bad, because tempo is important for this deck, and unreliable mana is the quickest way to fall behind on tempo. Speaker's effectiveness in particular wanes the longer you wait to cast it (Branchwalker, on the other hand, holds steady value more or less throughout the game). However, if your goal is to curve out and kill on Turn 4 (and if you don't, you are strictly worse than the classic Merfolk list), your mana needs to be as smooth and efficient as possible.

Quote from Ashiok »

Hibernation: they can only float infinite mana if you don't bounce devoted druid in responde to vizier. Why wouldn't you do that? You can also board away some of the green guys? What is you suggestion for CoCo decks? Hibernation also hits elves, which are usually faster than us. Dispel and pierce: Yes, I'm not adding dispel and pierce to combat the decks you mentioned, but to combat control decks as I said. And, as I said, your sideboard can't be tailored for everything. What would you change in the sideboard to improve the matchups against storm and nauseam without crippling yourself against dredge, living end, affinity, tron, etc? Why the 'sub-optimal' nature of the green splash? It is almost a free splash, if not entirely free. Yes, you will lose one game in one-hundred due to drawing awkwardly, but to say that the splash is suboptimal given that the new cards seem STRONG additions to the deck is just... guessing? To be fair, I didn't test them either,so they may be not as good as they seem, but I'm not claiming it is not a good splash without testing it. Finally: the deck is faster because the curve is lowered. Yes, the fastest kill can still happen only turn 4, but you will kill more often in earlier turns since you're not playing slow spells like master of waves. Master is not bad, but it is not for the current metagame in my honest opinion. That's all. I will address the other posts later.

Everything you said about Hibernation can be done better by Echoing Truth - costs less mana to hold up, has 0 friendly fire issues, buys you the turn you need against the threat in question, and is better against the field. The proposal to take out green creatures to make Hibernation work is particularly bewildering, given that most non-dork green creatures in CoCo decks have useful ETB effects that you don't want to give them a redo on, and that you're going to need to pressure them in order to win (and all of your green creatures are early drops meant to pressure the opponent). You combat CoCo decks by disrupting early then aggroing hard - those Spell Pierces need to be Negates (because their ability to ramp makes "tax" counterspells bad), and Ceremonious Rejection needs to be prominently involved in your sideboard for Affinity/Eldrazi/Tron.

As for your comments on the splash... please see Nikachu's video series on splashing colors in Merfolk (I'm specifically linking the one for G, but he did one for every color). If that's not enough for you, check out Corbin Hosler's stab at it. This is well-trod ground, and we know that all of the splashes are sub-optimal from the testimonials of players who have tried it and found wanting. Also, adding a couple of 1-drops does not inherently make the deck significantly faster - Merfolk's T4 kills come from double/triple Lord and 1-2 other attackers. That can be anything from a Cursecatcher to a Silvergill Adept to a Harbinger of the Tides. Your deck looks more like a Zoo deck than theirs, and I don't mean that as a compliment - Zoo is gone from the competitive meta, in part because vanilla beaters are something this metagame is well-tuned to beat.

I also think you massively underestimate Master of Waves - it's very difficult for many decks to remove, especially with a Kira, Great Glass-Spinner on the battlefield. It usually wins the game on the spot against Burn, and the likes of Shadow need to basically find a Revolted Fatal Push on the spot or die (spoiler: they usually don't, because otherwise they would have died to your other creatures earlier in the game).

My conclusion is that you're inexperienced in the format, and that is leading you to draw erroneous conclusions as to what the deck does and does not need. Commander experience in particular translates poorly over to 60-card constructed. You can test your deck if you like, but I think you'll find that you won't be any faster, and thus your deck will be strictly worse than the classic shell (which is classic for a reason).

Quote from Momsie »

How good is Merfolk in the current meta with GDS, E-Tron and bg/x? I have been looking in this deck, but not sure if it is the right choice tho

All of those matchups are varying degrees of good for us (with Grixis Shadow being the easiest and E-Tron being the closest). The ones that are tough are Affinity and Valakut.

Dismember is not dead against a good portion of the meta. It's a bad card against burn and that's about it. I didn't cut the green cards because I was basing it off your build and opinions on Harbinger being so-so. I cut a Harbinger because we agreed that it's hit or miss and I cut a Rejeery to keep the curve low. Also, redundancy is a factor here. All three of these cards have the ability to remove a creature from the board, Dismember just happens to do it permanently.

Dispel against Cryptic is a nice trade up in mana and I didn't argue for Dispel against Lantern or Liliana. I said run both Negate and Dispel for different purposes. I argued for Dispel against Coco decks to hit Coco and Chord which is a much better answer than your suggestion of Spell Pierce. Negate is going to be good against lantern, Eldrazi tron, Valakut and so on. I would argue against any counters at all against Liliana decks.

Measuring threats against sweepers is a bad suggestion? You think you're going to get a turn 3 or turn 4 kill before they can deploy anger or supreme verdict? That doesn't make sense at all. You beat control by putting a few threats down and chipping away at damage forcing them to use verdict or anger while you still have threats to deploy in hand. Obviously Verdict has no place in an argument about what counter to use, but if you are playing against anger there is no way I'm unloading my hand only to get swept up. You aren't going to beat 20 life in a race against anger of the gods. You deploy a threat or two, chip away and show them that they have to deal with your board. This allows both sides to make land drops which will make Spell Pierce worthless and the extra mana that negate costs negligible.

Casting your blue spells is exactly why skewing your mana base is an issue. What good is any interaction at all going to be if your land base is Cavern, Unclaimed, and a Mutavault. And branchwalker is only a cantrip for land which is not an answer to anything, or it scrys 1. It's card parity at best, not card advantage.

If you think Vial is more powerful than Coco you're mistaken. Vial is great on turn one and diminishes every turn after. Coco is a card I'd be happy to see at any point in the game. Why do you think GW versions of hatebears in modern don't run Vial? If you're splashing green Coco is the more powerful choice.

The dies to doom blade argument isn't valid against Master. They can simply push a Branchwalker if that's what you're replacing MoW with and the only thing Bushwalker got you is a land in hand or an unwanted card out of the way. Master of waves is much more difficult to deal with than Branchwalker if that's the argument you're going with. At least MoW forces them to have a snap and a fetch to trigger revolt if that's the line their taking. And if they can't deal master, a push on the token still leaves a 2/1 behind rather than nothing like Branchwalker would.

No one is disregarding these cards. You came here with an opinion and some of us have a different opinion. Test them out and prove us otherwise just like any other science experiment. I specifically said that the card deserve testing, but they are really going to have to wow me to earn a spot in the deck. I just don't see the green splash adding anything to the deck that does something better than we already do now.

Quote from Ashiok »

DeckMagic OnlineOCTGN2ApprenticeBuy These Cards
// 60 Maindeck // 4 Artifact 4 Aether Vial // 32 Creature 4 Kumena's speaker 4 Cursecatcher 4 Lord of Atlantis 4 Master of the Pearl Trident 4 Merfolk Branchwalker 4 Silvergill Adept 4 Harbinger of the Tides 4 Merrow Reejerey // 4 Enchantment 4 Spreading Seas	// 20 Land 4 Cavern of Souls 4 Mutavault 4 Unclaimed Territory 4 Botanical Sanctum 4 Island	// 15 Sideboard // 2 Creature 2 Kopala, Warden of Waves // 4 Artifact 4 Relic of Progenitus // 9 Instant 4 Ceremonious Rejection 1 Hurkyl's Recall 2 Echoing Truth 2 Spell Pierce

I play mostly Elves and Mefolk as my second go to deck, so im not a expert on the deck as most of the others here. But my biggest thing on the land base you posted is that you are so very vulnerable to blood moon. Like to the point that I think you almost lose to it if its resolves turn two or three. And I don't think its a card you can completely ignore in modern. Burn and Affinty variations are even playing with it currently.

23 players today at Modern League tournament, 2 more until Masters.

I copied this list: http://sales.starcitygames.com//deckdatabase/displaydeck.php?DeckID=114569
Changed -1 Reej, +1 Image in the main and -1 Claim, +1 Unified in the side.

R1 Bye

R2 vs Allfoil, Invention if possible, Affinity
He mulled to five but had Skirge into Overseer. I was pilling pressure but that lifelink was annoying, up until two Waves sealed the deal, just before Skirge would lethal me. Game 2 I had decent start with him chipping in for few poison dmg doubled by Pest (two Inkmoths). I had to Dismember one and go from 16 to 12, and Seas the other. 3 Galvanic Blasts later...
Game 3 I had some dudes and he had some dudes and Master of Etherium, no Islandwalk. Harbinger returned his 10/10 Master for huge tempo swing. When it returned I attacked all out and he blocked to go to one (he saw Dismembers and no Snags) to have a chance and swing back for enough.
Gut Shot later...
2:1
2 can play the Burn game! (some kind of achievement unlocked)

R3 vs Mirror
I had it, then he had it, then he kept a onelander (nonVial) with 7 cards.
2:1

R4 vs Druid Company
Islandwalked him game 1, got comboed out game 2 and controlled his mana with Claim, pressured him with Lords and had Dispel for Company.
2:1

R5 vs Elves
Two ships (or a ship and a bunch of hippies) passing in the night.
I had Cursecatcher, into Lord, into Muta and Reej, into Muta and Waves.
He had mana elf into Archdruid into things and stuff and Chord for gb elf that drains for number of Elves (-7), into Chord for Ezuri and trample b****hit).
He killed me on 3 life, no Seas in sight.
He managed to somehow lose game 2, I did nothing spectacular but he had no payoff cards, just mana and dorks (Archdruid was Dismembered).
Kept a onelander in game 3 and promptly died.
1:2

4:1 score will keep me on top of standings and I hope to finish the League in first place, before Masters at end of year.

3 mana do nothing? No thanks. It'll make Merfolk a thing in Standard, but the card's too slow for Modern.

Whether white splash is better or not is not relevant here, mana curve with 12 3-drops + 4 Waves is extremely clunky without drawn Vial and zero Snag/Dismember.
2 Plains is not acceptable for competitive Merfolk build.

I made it to top 8 in a local PPTQ with 50 people. Finished 2nd after swiss rounds with a 5-1 record but couldn't make it past quarter finals.

This is the list I took:



This are the decks I faced:

Round 1: Skred 2-0
Round 2: Affinity 0-2
Round 3: Titanshift 2-1
Round 4: Titanshift 2-1
Round 5: Esper Goryo's Vengance 2-0
round 6: Burn 2-0

Quarter finals

Jeskai Control 0-2

I didn't take any notes so I'm going to give some overall thoughts.

I expected some numbers of titanshift and Gx Tron in the meta, that's why unified will is in the deck instead of negates and boy they did payoff facing Titanshift twice in a row and countering a couple titans.

Smuggler's copter did tons of work dodging warths and digging for answers while dumping extra vials/lands, also acted as a wall against burn.

Echoing truth was useful against Esper Goryo bouncing 2 Obzedat, ghost council giving me an extra turn for the win.

Countermagic was really usefull in most combo/control matches, unified will acted as counterspell the whole tournament.

The Jeskai list ran 4 copies of spell queller and 4 snapcaster mage with few wraths. Game 1 was a close match but couldn't deal with a full playset of quellers and tons of burn. Game 2 I didn't have much luck, never managed to really establish a clock and was flooded with no caverns or vials to at least sneak in a couple creatures past countermagic.

Never managed to draw Ceremonious rejection or Gut shots in game 2 against affinity but I know they can be sufficient due to online testing.

Echoing truth felt more versatile and useful than dismember at least in this tournament I am willing to test it main deck as some other posters suggested. I will definitely keep the 2 copters in the mainboard.

Keep swimming!